Grievance

How to spell grievance

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grievance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grievance mean?

1. nounA real or imagined cause for complaint, especially about unfair treatment at work.

Grievance in a sentence

• The employee filed a formal grievance against her manager.

• The union met with management to resolve every outstanding grievance.

Where does grievance come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travels back to the Latin adjective gravis, which literally meant 'heavy' or 'weighty', the same root behind 'grave', 'gravity', and 'aggravate'. From gravis came the verb gravare, 'to burden or weigh down', which in Old French softened into grever, 'to afflict or harm', and produced the noun grevance for a hardship or injury inflicted on someone. English borrowed it in the 1300s, at first meaning physical hardship or oppression, before narrowing to its modern sense of a formal complaint about being wronged. The spelling keeps the 'ie' from the related word 'grief', which is the part writers most often slip on, and the ending settled as '-ance' rather than '-ence' through its French route. Remembering that a grievance is rooted in grief makes the troublesome 'ie' order easier to fix.

How the word is built

• griev- (from grief; ultimately Latin gravis 'heavy')
• -ance (noun suffix forming 'state or instance of')